1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate to a robot cleaner which can change a traveling pattern thereof to new traveling pattern according to a cleaning start position and carrying out a cleaning process along the changed pattern, and a method for controlling the robot cleaner.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a robot cleaner moves in a cleaning region without receiving a user's command, and sucks dust or dirty material from the bottom of the cleaning region so as to carry out a cleaning process in the cleaning region.
The robot cleaner repeatedly performs a cleaning process while moving along a predetermined traveling pattern to clean a given region. Representative traveling patterns include a lattice-shaped traveling pattern, a random traveling pattern, or the like. If the automatic cleaning command is received in the robot cleaner, the robot cleaner performs the cleaning process simultaneously while moving along a given traveling pattern (e.g., the lattice-shaped traveling pattern or the random traveling pattern). Generally, if the user wishes to control the robot cleaner to start a cleaning process from the outside of the charger, this means that the user wishes to remove dust gathered at a current position. However, a conventional robot cleaner is able to perform the cleaning process only along one traveling pattern (e.g., the lattice-shaped traveling pattern or the random traveling pattern) regardless of whether the automatic cleaning process starts from the position of the charger or if the automatic cleaning process starts from a position outside of the charger. Most robot cleaners move from their current positions to other positions, so that they are unable to first remove dust gathered in their current positions. As a result, the user must directly control the movement of the robot cleaner.
In order to prevent the above user inconvenience, although the conventional robot cleaner has adopted a spot function for preferentially cleaning a specific position (i.e., a position outside of the charger), most users may not know how to use the spot cleaning function or may not frequently use this spot cleaning process.